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Phonics Versus Whole Language: Why Whole
Language Teachers Don't Think It Is Much of a Debate

The
media have helped promote the notion that when it comes to reading instruction it's
phonics versus whole language. Presented this way, those who advocate phonics supposedly
do not have children read whole texts, while, on the other hand, those who
advocate whole language supposedly do not teach phonics.

Though
some extremists do advocate phonics first, postponing the reading of any
meaningful text until phonics has been mastered (or at least presented) is a
position not taken by most educators. Among the community of reading educators
and researchers, the issue is not whether phonics needs to be taught before or
after engagement with real books; it is, instead, an issue of how phonics is
learned and how it should be taught. One major position, expressed in Becoming
a Nation of Readers, is that phonics needs to be taught systematically,
explicitly, and perhaps intensively--though not extensively. This position
assumes that reading is comprised of separate component skills (phonics skills
among them) that add up to the act of reading. The other major position is that
functional phonics knowledge is developed more gradually, through various means
that include a very different kind of direct teaching. This position assumes
that reading is a whole, indivisible process in which several different cueing
systems (phonics cues among them) are used simultaneously for making
sense. The latter is a position held by whole language educators.

What does the research say?

Those
who advocate systematic teaching of phonics point to research indicating that systematic
and explicit instruction in phonics leads to higher reading achievement scores
on standardized tests during the primary grades. (Typically, these tests have a
section testing phonics skills in isolation.) They build their case primarily
upon the research synthesized and analyzed by Chall in Learning to Read: the
Great Debate (1967; updated 1983) and reiterated in such publications as
Anderson et al.'s Becoming a Nation of Readers (1985) and Adams'
Beginning to Read: Learning and Thinking about Print (1990), summarized by
Lehr, Osborn, and Stahl. None of this research explicitly compares the
development of phonics knowledge in systematic phonics classrooms with the
development of phonics knowledge in whole language classrooms.

Critics
of this research remind the educational community not only that much of this research
is flawed (Carbo, 1989), but that even the best of the research does not indicate
that teaching phonics intensively produces any advantages on standardized tests
beyond the primary grades (Turner, 1989).

Whole
language educators criticize this research specifically on the grounds that (1)
standardized tests tell little (if anything) of what we really need to know
about children's literacy development, and (2) much more broadly conceived
research is needed for revealing what is learned in systematic phonics
classrooms as contrasted with whole language classrooms. Notice the emphasis on
"classrooms" rather then programs. Classrooms in which phonics
is taught systematically usually differ from whole language classrooms in much
more global ways. The former classrooms typically reflect a transmission, part-to-whole
approach to teaching, with learners being relatively passive; the latter reflect
a transactional whole to part approach, with learners taking a much more active
role. In practice within the classroom, it is almost impossible to isolate program
from perspective. That is, whole language and systematic phonics are each embedded
in the overall perspectives they reflect.

Recently,
some researchers have begun to compare systematic phonics with whole language, taking
care to describe what allowed them to categorize the classrooms as "whole language."
This research suggests that standardized test scores may not necessarily be
lower for whole language students and that whole language students get a much
better start in developing the range of behaviors and attitudes that
characterize the literate adult.

One
example is a study in which Ribowsky compared the effects of a code-emphasis
approach with a whole language approach upon the emergent literacy of
kindergartners. The code-emphasis students used a pro gram with an intensive
focus upon developing phonics knowledge, while the whole language students used
the Shared Book Experience approach explained by Don Holdaway (1979) in Foundations
of Literacy. The whole language students did better than the code emphasis
students on tests of letter recognition and knowledge of consonant letter/sound
relationships--the opposite of what might have been predicted, given the
instructional focus of both programs. The whole language children also
showed significantly greater growth in their concepts about print and various
aspects of language and literacy.

Whole
language children's greater progress toward literacy is illustrated even
better, however, by studies in which a still wider range of assessment measures
are used. A study by Stice and Bertrand involved fifty "at
risk" first graders, five from each of five rural or urban whole language
classrooms, and their matches from traditional classrooms in which phonics
skills were taught explicitly, according to the basal reader program and the
state mandated skills requirements. When the children were compared over a two
year period on various quantitative and qualitative measures, the whole language
children showed greater gains and better performance on virtually all measures.
The differing responses to the reading and writing interview questions are
especially interesting, leading Stice and Bertrand (1990) to these conclusions,
among others: (1) the whole language students had a greater awareness of
alternative strategies for dealing with reading problems; (2) they appeared
more aware that the purpose of reading is to make meaning (rather than merely
to call out the words); (3) they appeared to be developing greater independence
in both reading and writing; and (4) they appeared to be more confident readers
and writers.

Whole
language educators see such research as beginning to document what they have already
been observing informally in their classrooms that whole language children do
not seem to suffer in their functional grasp of phonics, and that, in addition,
they gain considerably more from a whole language approach than from more
traditional instruction.

There
seems to be every reason to think, then, that the phonics that children
actually need can be developed, along with other literate strategies and
attitudes, by (1) immersing children in literature and other print; (2)
discussing with children some of the prominent sound features in what they're
reading; (3) demonstrating

the
relationship between spoken sounds and the written letters that represent them;
(4) giving children opportunities to explore letter/sound relationships through
activities the children themselves initiate or select; (5) providing children
with opportunities to listen to tape recordings of various texts, and to follow
the print as they listen; (6) helping children learn to write letters for the
sounds they hear in words, as they learn to write; (1) helping children use
letter/sound cues along with other cues as they read; and (8) supporting
children in using their own strategies for grasping letter/sound relationships.
Whole language teachers find that

few
children fail to develop a functional grasp of phonics through such means.

Not phonics versus whole language, but phonics
within whole language!

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

Adams, M. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning
about print. Cambridge, MA M.I.T. Press. (Lehr, Osborn, and Stahl's summary is
published by the Center for the Study of Reading, Champaign, University of
Illinois.)